July 13, 2006

Finally, Pakistan’s civil society and media have launched an intelligent, fact- and analysis-backed investigation into that cruel, discriminatory and anti-women ordinance called Hudood. So eloquent and informative has been this joint exercise, that even the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has woken up and decided that the Ordinance has indeed caused much grief to women, and needs to be changed. In fact, the CII Chairman has prepared a report on this, as has the CII’s legal committee. The CII has also sensibly suggested that the Hudood laws be incorporated in the Pakistan Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code.

The President too, has jumped in and last Friday promulgated the Law Reforms Ordinance 2006 that permits women to be freed on bail, enabling around 1,300 female prisoners to be released immediately. For the past 27 years, the agony and suffering of under-trial women was compounded by the fact that bail was not allowed under the Hudood Ordinance.

Let’s see when General Musharraf’s famed enlightened moderation moves even further, and does away with this ignorant and ill-conceived Ordinance altogether. A journalist who covered the Karachi jail in great depth told me that when she’d ask the women what their crime was, many among them would reply, “I don’t know.” The jailors would then inform the journalist that the ignorant women were there due to the Hudood Ordinance.

We hear quite often, thanks to our alert press, about the victims of rape who are punished by being thrown into prison. But what about the countless women locked up because of the vindictiveness of ex-husbands? Many unlettered women, when divorced by their husbands, eventually remarry. The former husband then maliciously reports the divorced wife to the police, claiming that she is living in sin.

The police of course gleefully arrest her and she spends long years in jail not knowing why. Her explanation that she was divorced does not hold water as she has no document to prove it, nor was her divorce registered anywhere. The ex-husband of course denies ever having divorced her. You can imagine how tragic the situation is for divorced women in isolated rural communities who remarry and end up in jail, not understanding why. Hopefully, they can at least be bailed out now.

A week or so before the CII expressed its reservations about the Hudood Ordinance, I heard with disbelieving ears the Jamaat Chief announce on TV that amendments to the Ordinance could be considered. Now why couldn’t this self-appointed authority on religion have realised this earlier? For instance, when this obscurantist Ordinance was first promulgated in 1979 by General Ziaul Haq to perpetuate his rule. Or at anytime during the 27 years that have elapsed since then. He cannot claim to have been ignorant about the unjust and inhuman fallout of his Ordinance. Human rights and other activists have been screaming themselves hoarse on this subject for the last two and a half decades.

At least the Jamaat leader is prepared to review the HO and rectify its weaknesses. But a large number of religious zealots have reacted aggressively and promptly declared their violent opposition to any changes in the Hudood Ordinance. What is their problem, I wonder? Why do they get satisfaction by inflicting anguish and suffering on innocent women? Islam is considered a humane and compassionate religion, so where are these zealots’ sympathies?

According to a Karachi-based lawyer, nowhere does it say in the Quran that men or women who commit adultery have to be stoned or imprisoned. The lawyer maintains that the punishment prescribed in the Quran for ‘fornication’ consists of scourging both man and woman a hundred stripes. That’s all. In any case, it has now been generally acknowledged on TV and in the print media by a host of religious scholars that the Hudood Ordinance has very little to do with Islam. Rather, it has everything to do with politics.

There seems to be no limit to the extent to which this patriarchal society will go in order to suppress and crush women. People are well aware of the frequency of murders that take place under the garb of karo-kari. Curiously, it is often the odd cousin, brother-in-law or uncle who carries out the murder. It makes one wonder whether the woman was killed for rebuffing the male relative’s advances. We can’t eradicate karo-kari, because it is a tribal custom and the Pakistani male is a tribal first, and a Muslim second. Hence, the Assembly can only pass a meaningless and ineffective bill against this evil custom.

And what is tribalism? Yoked to feudalism, it is the earliest social system, that once played a useful role, when the world was young and life simple. But the modern world is complex and if we are to thrive in the 21st century, we must outgrow this obsolete system. It is wreaking havoc wherever it prevails: mainly in Africa and the Arab countries, and Pakistan, of course. President Moi of Kenya has characterised tribalism as a cancer. By being immersed in this primitive tribal system, Pakistanis are missing out on the moderating influences of modern civilisation.

An intellectual, humane and critically analytical offensive also needs to be waged against the Blasphemy Laws which, unfortunately, mainly affect the minorities and therefore tend to be ignored. And while we are about it, the Qisas and Diyat laws need to be reviewed and either removed, or made less damaging.

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